Mark Pryor

Mr. PRYOR

Mr. PRYOR. Mr. President, I rise to talk about the farm bill. Ten days, that is all the time we have to work out some agreement on our farm legislation before we revert to the 1949 farm policy in this country. Let me make this very clear to the American people and to my colleagues. This has nothing to do with the traditional battle lines in agriculture. This is not one of those Midwest farming versus Southern farming type scenarios. This is not a specialty crop versus a row crop type issue. This has nothing to do with that at all. It is an ideological fight, where we see hyperpartisanship and gridlock politics taking over the Congress. Today, the House of Representatives has a vote. It is a very important vote. What they are proposing is that they cut $40 billion from the nutrition title over 10 years. That is $40 billion. Here again, this is not about a traditional fight that you see and you have seen for decades in agriculture. This is about hunger in America. It is a sad fact. It is something that maybe people in this building do not like to acknowledge. But we have people who are hungry in this country. They may be people with whom we go to church. They may be our neighbors. They may be friends, coworkers, folks with whom we graduated from high school. They could be seniors or children or the working poor. But we have people in this country who are hungry today. Can you imagine America being the land of plenty and having hungry people and having folks in this building--in the Chamber of the House of Representatives--voting to not lend a helping hand when people need it the most? I am reminded of that great song, ``America the Beautiful,'' where it starts out: O beautiful for spacious skies, For amber waves of grain, For purple mountain majesties Above the fruited plain! It goes on and on and on to talk about the riches of this great country. But, unfortunately, as I said, today we have way too much hunger in our Nation. The Congress can do something about that. The Congress can do something about it. In fact, the Senate already has done something about it. Thanks to Senator Stabenow and Senator Cochran and the bipartisan efforts on the Senate Agriculture Committee, they made responsible reforms in SNAP, in other nutrition programs to streamline and fix and correct and improve the nutrition title. They went after what we are concerned about, such as waste and abuse of the system, and fraud. We all know you have some of that in these programs. But we have a saying in our State. It is kind of a country saying. I know people have heard it before. But we say: If it ain't broke, don't fix it. Our agriculture law in this country ain't broke. It can be improved, and I think that is what the Senate has done. The Senate has been responsible. The Senate has worked in a bipartisan way. Again, that bill passed through this Chamber a few months ago with 66 votes, a very bipartisan vote. That is the solution. That is the solution of us working together. Unfortunately, again we have people down the hall in the House of Representatives who are going to put that in jeopardy with a ``my way or the highway'' political solution. This is not good for the country. I think the reason some of these folks are doing this is because they do not understand the impact their decision could have on this country. But let me put it in perspective. When we look at America, there are lots of different ways to look at agriculture and look at our economy and look at the global economy, but one way is this: We have several core strengths in the U.S. economy. We do some things better than anybody else in the world, and one of those is agriculture. If we look at investment, if we look at innovation, if we look at new farming practices and ways to conserve water--how to get more per acre--all these things that improve and increase production and nutrition, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, they come from America. It is one of the core strengths of the U.S. economy. Everybody in the world wants to be like America when it comes to agriculture. Everybody wants what we have. They copy us. They model what they do after this country. It is something we should be proud of. I know inside the beltway it is not very exciting, it is not very flashy, but we have the safest and highest quality and, in relative terms, the cheapest food supply in the entire world. It is one of the true reasons for America's strength. But, unfortunately, if we do not pass a new farm bill by September 30, we run the risk of putting all that in jeopardy, and there could be dire consequences. There is no question about it. If we talk to all the experts, talk to all the economists, talk to the people who understand this, what we can see very clearly is that crop prices will destabilize, and that means some prices will go up, some will go down. For example, soybean farmers all over this country are going to lose their crop support. They are going to lose that protection that has been there since the 1960s. Because it was not there in 1949, it will be gone, and that will be devastating to the soybean industry. That is just one little piece of the puzzle. I could go on and on. We have a huge trade deficit in this country. We know that. But our saving grace, when it comes to trade, is agriculture. Those export programs to sell our ag products overseas will be lost if this agreement is not reached. Again, food prices will rise dramatically. We have heard others talk about that even this morning. The Democratic leader mentioned it. But it is going to hurt not only farmers, it is going to hurt families all over this country. This is personal to me. I know in the Acting President pro tempore's home State of Hawaii they have a huge agricultural sector. I know it is very important to his State. Everybody thinks of how beautiful Hawaii is and tourism and all that, but agriculture is critically important to his State's economy, just like it is for the other 49 States. In almost every State--maybe with one or two exceptions--agriculture is very critical to that State's economy. That is true for Arkansas. Again, this is very personal for me. One in six jobs in our State is related directly or indirectly to agriculture. Agriculture--we love our Fortune 500 companies. We love having them. We have several that are based in Arkansas. We are proud of them. But 25 percent of our State's economy is tied to agriculture--25 percent. So the question is, How do we fix this? It is something we will never hear on the talk shows. We will not hear the talking heads chatter on about this. But the way we fix it is to work in a bipartisan way, to come together, to be very responsible--as the Senate has been on this issue--to put something together, and to get it done. This is why groups in my State, such as the Arkansas Farm Bureau, Agricultural Council of Arkansas, Riceland Foods, Arkansas Rice Growers Association, Tyson Foods, the Arkansas Cattlemen's Association, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera--the list goes on--all supported what we did in the Senate, and they do not support what is going on in the House right now. But even more important than the groups, I have been around my State, of course, all year--and over the last 10 years. But during the August recess, I went around the State, and every time I saw a farmer--and I literally talked to hundreds of them--they said: Please, please, don't let this happen. Don't let this happen. Why do we want to put all this at risk? What we have now is working. Sure, we can make improvements. Yes, we support the Senate bill. Even though the Senate bill is not perfect, we support that because we know the importance of agriculture. I would ask my House colleagues to please get themselves out of this manufactured crisis they have created for us all. Let's turn off the politics. Let's work together. The American people are counting on us. I yield the floor.

Mr. PRYOR

Mr. PRYOR. Madam President, I wish to thank my two colleagues from New Hampshire and Ohio and, of course, my colleagues from Alaska and Oregon as well for their leadership on this very important piece of legislation. I have four amendments that I would love to be considered, that I would love to be included in the legislation, and I hope we are able to move these forward. But let me just talk about two of those. I do not want to take the Senate's time. I understand other Senators may be on their way over to the floor to speak. Let me first start with the Quadrennial Energy Review. This is something on which I have worked with the Senator from Alaska and many others in this Chamber. In fact, it is a bipartisan amendment. It is amendment No. 1881. Our cosponsors are Senators Alexander, Begich, Boozman, Coons, Heinrich, Tester, Tom Udall, and Wyden. Again, it is a bipartisan group of Senators. Basically, one of the things we have learned from the Department of Defense is every 4 years they do a Quadrennial Defense Review, and that helps them determine what is going on within their agency as an agency. It helps them determine the strengths and weaknesses, the needs that need to be addressed. It helps them plan, and it also helps us make decisions. We want to make good defense decisions. The only way you do that is by knowing what you have on hand and what you need. Well, this is the same for energy. We have a lot of very well- intentioned energy programs and ideas that either float around this Capitol Building or float around the various Departments or that are law right now. A lot of these programs exist, but they are not necessarily coordinated. There is no one there who is really making sure all of the dots connect and we are able to have a smart energy policy. So I feel like a Quadrennial Energy Review, every 4 years we would go--the Federal Government--top to bottom, look at all of our energy needs, look at our capabilities, look at our shortcomings, look at where we need to focus our resources. Should we be doing research in one area and should we be focusing on manufacturing somewhere else? But this will allow us to have a good, solid review every 4 years so we can make good decisions, so the various Departments can make good decisions. Also, it will help industry know kind of what is coming down the pike. It will help bring us together and coordinate in a very positive and constructive way. So the Quadrennial Energy Review, from my standpoint, is a very important piece and building block. It is laying the foundation for having a smart energy policy for this country. That is one thing we need to recognize, quite honestly, here in the Senate. Again, we have good intentions, but we do not always have a good, cohesive, and smart energy policy. So the QER is something I hope we would be able to get through on this legislation and get this legislation moving through the process. Let me give you one example, Madam President, on the Quadrennial Energy Review. We have in our country now a lot more domestic energy than we have had in years past, and it is very exciting. In my State we produce a lot of natural gas through horizontal drilling and fracking, et cetera, and that is common in many other States around the country. I see some Senators here where they have the same thing. Sometimes it is oil, sometimes it is gas, sometimes it is both. Let's take natural gas for one moment. We have people come into my office, and they will say: Hey, this is great that we have all of this natural gas now. Why don't we liquefy it and export it? Okay. That is an idea. We ought to talk about that and think about that. Or another group will come in and say: Hey, we have all of this natural gas. Why don't we actually turn it into diesel fuel? Okay, apparently you can do that. The technology is there. Let's talk about that. Then we have other folks who come to us and they say: Why don't we take this natural gas and let's convert our diesel fleet over to natural gas? Here again, okay, that all sounds good. But I do not think you can do all three of those things. We do not have any mechanism right now to coordinate that and put all of that together and get consistent with our energy policies.

Mr. PRYOR. Absolutely.

Mr. PRYOR. That is exactly right. I thank the Senator from Oregon for his good question, because that is exactly right. We need some mechanism to make sure we are consistent and coherent and cohesive in our energy policy in the country. Things change. That is why you want to do this about every 4 years. You do not need to do it every year. It is too much work and too much going on. But just as with the Department of Defense, things change. What happens is you get a benchmark from 4 years ago that suddenly you have a good comparison. You have a baseline that you can look back to 4 years ago and see if you are making progress, if your policy is going in the right direction. Maybe in this case we have a lot of energy programs that are not working very well. This will help us identify those. Maybe we have some that are working great, that we ought to be spending more money on. This will help us identify those. I do thank the Senator for his question. I do see we have other Senators coming to the floor. Let me talk very quickly about one other amendment I have. It is the voluntary certification program, here again, bipartisan, working with Senator Sessions. It is amendment No. 1879. This is a very specific amendment for some very specific industries: heating, cooling, commercial refrigeration and water-heating products. This is not economywide. This is very specific to those industries. But right now what they do is they self-certify. They self-certify. I think they should be allowed to continue to do that, assuming their certification meets certain credible and scientific standards, which I think they do now. If they do not now, they should. But what this will do is actually save the government money. There is no reason why the Department of Energy and others should be reviewing this and making them do extra certification and more testing, et cetera, when it has already been done right now to the standards everyone should accept. I could talk more about this. I do see I have a couple of colleagues here on the floor. It is my understanding they would like to speak. I yield the floor.

Mr. PRYOR

Mr. PRYOR. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on September 18, 2013.

Mr. PRYOR. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on September 18, 2013, at 2:30 p.m. in room 253 of the Russell Senate Office Building.

Mr. PRYOR. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Environment and Public Works be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on September 18, 2013, at 10 a.m. in room 406 of the Dirksen Senate office building, to conduct a hearing entitled, ``Implementing MAP-21's Provision to Accelerate Project Delivery.''

Mr. PRYOR. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Finance be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on September 18, 2013.

Mr. PRYOR. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on September 18, 2013, at 10 a.m. in room SD- 430 of the Dirksen Senate office building.

Mr. PRYOR. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on September 18, 2013, at 9:30 a.m.

Mr. PRYOR. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Indian Affairs be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on September 18, 2013, in room SD-628 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building, at 2:30 p.m.

Mr. PRYOR. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on the Judiciary be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate, on September 18, 2013, at 10 a.m., in room SD-226 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building, to conduct a hearing entitled ``Reevaluating the Effectiveness of Federal Mandatory Minimum Sentences.''

Mr. PRYOR. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Small Business and entrepreneurship be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on September 18, 2013, at 10 a.m. in Room 428A Russell Senate Office Building to conduct a roundtable entitled ``Closing the Wealth Gap: Empowering Minority Owned Businesses to Reach Their Full Potential for Growth and Job Creation.''

Mr. PRYOR. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Special Committee on Aging be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate September 18, 2013, to conduct a hearing entitled ``Older Americans: The Changing Face of HIV/AIDS.'' The Committee will meet in room 562 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building beginning at 2 p.m.

Mr. PRYOR. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Subcommittee on Economic Policy be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on September 18, 2013, at 2:30 p.m. to conduct a hearing entitled ``Implementation of the Biggert-Waters Flood Insurance Act of 2012: One Year After Enactment.''

Mr. PRYOR. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Subcommittee on Housing, Transportation, and Community Development be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on September 18, 2013, at 10:30 a.m. to conduct a hearing entitled ``Recovering From Superstorm Sandy: Assessing the Progress, Continuing Needs, and Rebuilding Strategy.''

Mr. PRYOR

Mr. PRYOR. I ask unanimous consent that at 2:15 p.m. the Senate be in a period of morning business until 2:30 p.m., with the time controlled by Senator Udall of Colorado and Senator Bennet; further, that at 2:30 p.m. the Senate resume consideration of S. 1392.

Mr. PRYOR

Mr. PRYOR. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on September 17, 2013, at 9:30 a.m., in room SD- 366 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building in Washington, DC.

Mr. PRYOR. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Environment and Public Works be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on September 17, 2013.

Mr. PRYOR. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on September 17, 2013.

Mr. PRYOR. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Foreign Relations be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on September 17, 2013, at 2:15 pm.

Mr. PRYOR. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Foreign Relations be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on September 17, 2013, at 2:45 p.m., to hold a briefing entitled, ``Update on Syria''.

Mr. PRYOR. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Select Committee on Intelligence be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on September 17, 2013, at 2:30 p.m.

Mr. PRYOR

Mr. PRYOR. I would welcome an exchange for the Record.

Mr. PRYOR. I thank the Senator from Alabama for his question. In an effort to encourage energy efficiency compliance, reduce regulatory burdens, and save taxpayer dollars, the Sessions-Pryor amendment would require the Department of Energy to recognize voluntary certification programs for air conditioning, furnace, boiler, heat pump, and water heater products. Federal law requires these heating, cooling, and water heater products to comply with a complex set of Federal energy conservation and efficiency standards. Similar specifications apply to participants in the Energy Star program. The Energy Department currently spends millions of taxpayer dollars annually to conduct verification testing of these covered products. At the same time, U.S. manufacturers of these covered products spend millions of dollars themselves to participate in comprehensive voluntary certification programs that use independent, third-party laboratories to ensure compliance with applicable standards. Our amendment would require the Energy Department, when conducting routine testing to verify product ratings, to rely on data submitted through voluntary, independent certification programs that meet the robust list of criteria set forth in the amendment. To qualify, the voluntary certification program must be (among other things) nationally-recognized, maintain a publicly available list of certified models, and conduct verification testing on at least 20 percent of the product families using an ``independent third-party test laboratory.'' The amendment would require the Energy Department to reduce regulatory burdens for manufacturers participating in a voluntary certification program, as well as require testing of products that are not covered by a voluntary program. So, I greatly appreciate the leadership of my colleague Senator Sessions on this amendment. I would ask him: what are some of the policy reasons for supporting our amendment?